PHOENIX — A massive global tech issue has disrupted tens of thousands of businesses around the globe, causing flights to be cancelled, 911 systems to go down, healthcare locations to pause service and major media websites to fail.
Banner Health announced Friday morning that they were impacted by the outages. While their hospitals are open for in-patient care and medical emergencies, most other Banner locations including clinics, urgent care, imaging and other outpatient facilities are currently closed, the group announced.
Dignity Health said some of its facilities had been affected by the outage but hospitals remain open.
The apparent cause? A software update pushed out by cybersecurity company Crowdstrike that affected Microsoft users.
Outages locally have included Maricopa County voting locations, multiple Valley police dispatch centers, several airlines at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and all flights to and from Mesa Gateway Airport.
Gov. Katie Hobbs said on social media that her team is "closely monitoring all services that have been impacted and is working to ensure that we continue delivering the critical services that Arizonans rely on."
A Phoenix police spokesman told 12News that 'A widespread systems outage is impacting the City of Phoenix Police Department’s computerized 911 dispatch center." Dispatchers were able to take 911 calls but had to dispatch officers to calls manually, rather than by computer.
The outage was resolved shortly before 6 a.m.
The Mesa Police Department faced similar issues and quickly pivoted to manually taking 911 calls, writing the info down on a card and running it to dispatchers who could then direct officers over the radio.
"Our officers were instructed that we were in 'Phase1' which means that they will only be dispatched to emergency and priority traffic. Traffic stops and on view activity is put on hold unless immediately necessary because of the strain it would cause the communications team," a spokesperson for MPD said.
The outage was resolved as of 7 a.m. and Mesa police are working to record all information that was taken manually while systems were down.
The Pinal County Sheriff's Office was also affected by the outage and released the following statement:
"We are encountering computer issues affecting detention, dispatch, and deputy devices," said spokeswoman Lauren Reimer. " Our 911 lines remain operational, and this does not impact emergency response for residents or security with our facility."
Maricopa County Elections announced that there was an outage at some voting locations shortly before 8 a.m.
The outage began around midnight on the U.S. East Coast and spread quickly through the rest of the world.
Microsoft users worldwide, including banks and airlines, reported widespread outages on Friday, hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services. Microsoft posted a statement on X, formerly Twitter, around 3:45 a.m., that the underlying problem had been fixed. But in a longer statement, the company said there would still be "residual" effects for users of some of its services.
Queen Creek police reported similar problems; a town spokeswoman said the problems were resolved around 4 a.m., though some intermittent disruptions were expected on third-party platforms.
Pinal County released the following statement: "We are encountering computer issues affecting detention, dispatch, and deputy devices. Our 911 lines remain operational, and this does not impact emergency response for residents or security with our facility. "
At least one major medical provider, American Medical Response in Mesa, was "dealing with the issue," a dispatcher told 12News, referring further questions to the company's media relations personnel.
Valleywise Hospital was struck, as well.
Valleywise Health continues to provide patient care through the Crowdstrike outage," a hospital statement read. "While some IT systems were impacted, our Emergency Departments and Level I Trauma Center remain open. We also are continuing to proceed with scheduled surgeries. In some cases, our health care professionals had to resort to paper medical charting but our IT teams are carefully bringing back all our systems.
An HonorHealth spokesman told 12News that the hospital system's IT network was unaffected by the Crowdstrike issue.
Airports
As of 7:30 a.m., 22 flights from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport had been delayed and eight had been cancelled, according to FlightAware's Misery Map.
"A global technology issue is impacting departing flights," an airport spokeswoman told 12News. "Travelers should check their flight status before coming to the airport. We will provide more updates as they become available.
As of 8:30 a.m., all flights to and from the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport were cancelled for at least the next three hours.
Spirit Airlines issued a statement on X that it was unable to rebook affected customers Friday morning.
American Airlines, one of the two largest carriers flying out of Sky Harbor, was grounding flights due to "IT issues," along with Allegiant, Delta and United, according to the FAA's advisory page. American and Delta were able to return to service before 6 a.m.
United Airlines issues a statement shortly before 4:10 a.m., that it would be “resuming some flights but expect schedule disruptions to continue throughout Friday," according to the Washington Post.
Frontier Airlines posted on X, formerly Twitter, that a major outage was affecting booking, check-in and boarding passes early Thursday evening. But the airline posted about 9:30 p.m., Arizona time that its issues were gradually resolving.
American Airlines issued a statement Friday morning that said it was aware of a "technical issue issue" with the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike "that is impacting multiple carriers.” United Airlines issued a statement early Friday morning that attributed delays in its flights to issues with "a third party," as well.
What happened?
The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta. The outages all appeared to soar in volume around 10 p.m., Arizona time.
News outlets in Australia reported that airlines, telecommunications providers and banks, and media broadcasters were disrupted as they lost access to computer systems. Some New Zealand banks said they were also offline.
Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
The issues appears to be caused by a recent update deployed to companies from the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike.
"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted," the company said in a statement. "This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."
*This is a developing story. Please check back with 12News for the latest developments.*